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A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming


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Most important: please realize this thread is about bleeding edge experimentation and discovery. No one has The Answer™. If you are not into tweaking, just know that you can have a musically satisfying system without doing any of the nutty things we do here.

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10 minutes ago, micesol said:

Roy, I am curious as to how to hook up the Chord Dave through its RCA outputs to a pair of speakers. My Audio Note AN-E silver signature speakers are 94.5 efficient, so they may be candidates for direct hook up to the Chord Dave. I think this may have been described in this thread but can't remember which post. I know Louis offers a special way to hook up to his monitors, but how will I do this with Audio Note speakers? Thanks! 

I'm not Roy, but I would make a special set of speaker cables which terminate with RCA ouputs on one end for the DAVE and banana plugs or whatever you need for the speaker posts.  If you just want to test it for now get this cheap adapter and use an interconnect from DAVE to it. 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/311059749111?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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7 hours ago, amir57bs said:

 

do you mean using microRendu is far better than Single Box (with Sotm PCIe to USB CARD) ?

 

 

When powered by a superior low noise, low impedance PSU, yes, this has been my experience thus far.

 

With any large single box device, you have one device that must wear 2 hats and perform 2 important functions -- server and renderer.  Servers are often called upon to do a lot of heavy lifting such as running demanding music server apps and managing large music libraries.  In some systems, the server is also called upon to perform DSP functions and oversampling that require considerable computational power meaning powerful CPUs and lots of RAM.  Because these heavy lifting machines require larger motherboards that are seldom designed from the ground up for high fidelity audio playback, they contain numerous switching regulators, bad clocks, and unnecessary ICs.  What you end up with is a bloated, noisy, high-impedance system that is ill-suited to function as a renderer.  

 

The ideal renderer should have ultra low noise characteristics and be fleet-footed, responsive and agile (low impedance) because ultimately, this is the device that will be responsible for presenting your DAC a signal that is of the highest possible integrity.  In my experience, it is very hard (if not impossible) to be both George Foreman and Usain Bolt.  To be forced to choose one or the other results in significant compromises.  Because servers are noisy, it has generally been accepted that there must be separation (or at least isolation) between server and renderer.  With network renderers like the mR and sMS-200, that isolation is the galvanic isolation that is inherent within the Ethernet protocol.

 

Equally important, it is much more challenging to properly power a large ATX-based server.  An LPS-1 won't do it.  To design and build an ATX PSU with SR7-level performance would probably cost >$4k.  To properly power a lightweight endpoint is much easier to do.

 

Dedicated USB cards like SOtM's tX-USBexp or Paul Pang's V3 or V4 are very good but I'm not sure they provide enough isolation.  Even with SOtM's latest server, the sMS-1000SQ Ultra (which incorporates their latest clock in their USB card), SOtM claims that adding a tX-USBUltra to it results in further "huge" improvement.  I wouldn't be surprised if those who have invested heavily in an Aurender W20, Baetis Reference, Antipodes DX, Lumin U1, TotalDac Server or Sound Galleries SGM2015 find that adding an ISO Regen or tX-USBUltra to their single box server results in further significant improvement.

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6 hours ago, micesol said:

Roy, I am curious as to how to hook up the Chord Dave through its RCA outputs to a pair of speakers. My Audio Note AN-E silver signature speakers are 94.5 efficient, so they may be candidates for direct hook up to the Chord Dave. I think this may have been described in this thread but can't remember which post. I know Louis offers a special way to hook up to his monitors, but how will I do this with Audio Note speakers? Thanks! 

 

 

Hi Michael,

 

BTW, I love Audio Note speakers.

 

The EBay solution that ElviaCaprice suggested is a good way to start if you want to hear out it sounds.  There are many who can make you a good set should you decide to move forward.  

 

I am using an adapter made for me by High Fidelity Cables but unfortunately, they aren't cheap.  Dave at ZenWave Audio can make you a really good custom set (with your choice of wire and brand of connector) for less:

 

123_1.thumb.jpeg.c7bcadfaff5eb60c763c58686fa354cc.jpeg

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Thanks Roy! I am very much enjoying your journey and waiting to find what your research finally comes up with for an end game streaming audio system. Despite the fact that end game is, of course,  an anathema as there can never be such a thing. It's like saying one day there will be no more need for space exploration. That said, for nearly ten years my Audio Note system has been an end game of sorts for me. It cost me close to $100K, but what the hay :-).

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Just got pre-order email from Crux Audio.  Hmm, SMS-200Ultra is $1200 without master clock connector, 10% discount code good until 6/30.  Mucho dinero, but hard to ignore the fantastic feedback.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Since there is so much interest, i do want to point out that I am still experiencing the random pause problem with my Ultra stack that I mentioned in an earlier post: 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-the-sms-200-and-microrendu/?do=findComment&comment=659047

 

 

SOtM have asked me try a few different experiments to isolate the problem, and I have sent them the data. They seem very committed to solve the problem for me, so I'm quite hopeful. But I do want to be clear the issue still exists for me.

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37 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Since there is so much interest, i do want to point out that I am still experiencing the random pause problem with my Ultra stack that I mentioned in an earlier post: 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-the-sms-200-and-microrendu/?do=findComment&comment=659047

 

 

SOtM have asked me try a few different experiments to isolate the problem, and I have sent them the data. They seem very committed to solve the problem for me, so I'm quite hopeful. But I do want to be clear the issue still exists for me.

Rajiv, are you running two extra clocks from the TX USB Ultra to the sms-200?  Are you thus able to power the TX USB Ultra with an LPS-1 with 3 clocks on the sclk EX board inside?

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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9 hours ago, romaz said:

 

When powered by a superior low noise, low impedance PSU, yes, this has been my experience thus far.

 

With any large single box device, you have one device that must wear 2 hats and perform 2 important functions -- server and renderer.  Servers are often called upon to do a lot of heavy lifting such as running demanding music server apps and managing large music libraries.  In some systems, the server is also called upon to perform DSP functions and oversampling that require considerable computational power meaning powerful CPUs and lots of RAM.  Because these heavy lifting machines require larger motherboards that are seldom designed from the ground up for high fidelity audio playback, they contain numerous switching regulators, bad clocks, and unnecessary ICs.  What you end up with is a bloated, noisy, high-impedance system that is ill-suited to function as a renderer.  

 

The ideal renderer should have ultra low noise characteristics and be fleet-footed, responsive and agile (low impedance) because ultimately, this is the device that will be responsible for presenting your DAC a signal that is of the highest possible integrity.  In my experience, it is very hard (if not impossible) to be both George Foreman and Usain Bolt.  To be forced to choose one or the other results in significant compromises.  Because servers are noisy, it has generally been accepted that there must be separation (or at least isolation) between server and renderer.  With network renderers like the mR and sMS-200, that isolation is the galvanic isolation that is inherent within the Ethernet protocol.

 

Equally important, it is much more challenging to properly power a large ATX-based server.  An LPS-1 won't do it.  To design and build an ATX PSU with SR7-level performance would probably cost >$4k.  To properly power a lightweight endpoint is much easier to do.

 

Dedicated USB cards like SOtM's tX-USBexp or Paul Pang's V3 or V4 are very good but I'm not sure they provide enough isolation.  Even with SOtM's latest server, the sMS-1000SQ Ultra (which incorporates their latest clock in their USB card), SOtM claims that adding a tX-USBUltra to it results in further "huge" improvement.  I wouldn't be surprised if those who have invested heavily in an Aurender W20, Baetis Reference, Antipodes DX, Lumin U1, TotalDac Server or Sound Galleries SGM2015 find that adding an ISO Regen or tX-USBUltra to their single box server results in further significant improvement.

 

Thanks a million Romaz , nice write up , I agree you it is hard to get good sound if we use single box.

i think in my setup (My Berkeley Alpha USB to SPDIF Converter use Gordon Rankin AS codes) renderer should be as direct as possible to Stream data.

i have used iUSB 3.0 and Uptone Regen between Macbook and Berkeley . the result was awful .

after using some setups i have convinced the only way to get proper sound is using Gordon Ranking AS codes.

Berkeley , Ayre and Wavelength use Gordon Rankin AS Codes.

 

i have tested usb output of these 3 systems:

1. Macbook Pro 2014 (Mavericks + CAT Optimized code + Roon + renice coreaudio -20)

2. very low power ALIX 2d2 board as renderer with bit-perfect voyage mpd (www.lacocina.nl)

3. Desktop PC windows bit-perfect Foobar

4. OLD Macbook

 

all of them were crap sounding but Macbook pro was reasonable.

 

i guess ethernet renderer could not be the final solution and i guess using properly designed PCIe cards will be the right/hard direction.

I have read your comments and i 100% agree you the most important factor is good Power supply.

 

I think about a headless fanless Diskless (PXE Boot) low clock low power PC with good power supply plus a good PCIe Card powered by good linear power supply. i need no dsp or upsampling and i just use bit-perfect 44.1/16.

Supermicro X11SSH-F (directly connected x16 PCIe) and Xeon E3-1240L v5 (25w) are in my short list. i guess linux mpd could be better than windows/Roon but i am not sure.

 

my reference is CEC TL0-X to compare the result.

 

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9 hours ago, romaz said:

I wouldn't be surprised if those who have invested heavily in an Aurender W20, Baetis Reference, Antipodes DX, Lumin U1, TotalDac Server or Sound Galleries SGM2015 find that adding an ISO Regen or tX-USBUltra to their single box server results in further significant improvement.

100% agree.

Gordon Rankin think the best way is usb not ethernet and in his DAC he use opto isolation and convert usb to i2s.

i use berkeley because i use ear dac 4 spdif input.

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Direct connection between NAA and HQPlayer PC

I struggled with bridging my HQp PC to the NAA for weeks. The Ethernet poet just cannot bridge with the wifi adapter 

. I decided to get a dual port Ethernet card to try

Careless mistake and bought a PCI Card and not PCIe - does not fit 

After arranging a return I thought ... Hey I have 2 USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter. Let me try 2 of these ...

first experiment was wifi to router and 2 gigabit on HQPLAYER PC - one connected to my router and one to the Ethernet port of my NAA

(a quad core fanless PC with wifi and Ethernet)

Did not work this is just standard connection method

2ND experiment . 1 more Ethernet cable to the router for the built in Ethernet port. W/O Ethernet cables into the 2 gigabit adapters

Then NAA on wifi to router without any Ethernet connection

then I connected the two Ethernet cables on the gigabit adapters .. one more to the router and one more to the NAA

BRIDGED the two Ethernet gigabit to the fixed Ethernet plug in the HQ PC

FAILED to connect to the router the bridge dropped the router connection

about to give up then I thought hey there are 2 ends of a bridge!!!

then BREAKTHRU!!

I bridged the Wifi and Ethernet connection on the NAA ... yes the NAA

The router came on line on the NAA to the router

The 3 connection bridge of Ethernet on the PC Connected to the router 

SUCCESS

Initial impressions listening is quiet yet more dynamic sound at slightly lower volume

and I believe the NAA - HQ PC connection should be more resistant dropping out of the network 

Just sharing my experience with all CA members

thx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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10 hours ago, romaz said:

 

I wouldn't be surprised if those who have invested heavily in an Aurender W20, Baetis Reference, Antipodes DX, Lumin U1, TotalDac Server or Sound Galleries SGM2015 find that adding an ISO Regen or tX-USBUltra to their single box server results in further significant improvement.

Very possible, depending on DAC and so on.  I do have some experience here, I have listened to both the Aurender N10 and W20 with a Devialet D800.  With both Aurenders, better sound quality was obtained using the Aurender's AES/EBU output, rather than USB.  The most apparent difference was with bass definition and accuracy, which was clearly better via AES/EBU.  I suspect this might be related to leakage loops or similar, and indeed, this observation probably says more about the Devialet's USB implementation than it does about the Aurender.  So yes, taking it all as a system, I am sure in some set-ups an improvement could be found.  As for the extra clocking, I think more information is needed, although you guys appear to be gaining information by the day, so it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

Windows 11 PC, Roon, HQPlayer, Focus Fidelity convolutions, iFi Zen Stream, Paul Hynes SR4, Mutec REF10, Mutec MC3+USB, Devialet 1000Pro, KEF Blade.  Plus Pro-Ject Signature 12 TT for playing my 'legacy' vinyl collection. Desktop system; RME ADI-2 DAC fs, Meze Empyrean headphones.

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38 minutes ago, Confused said:

.As for the extra clocking, I think more information is needed, although you guys appear to be gaining information by the day, so it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

 

I think it's already been established that better extra clocking is a benefit.  Now the question lies in what configuration of components for the biggest bang in SQ and software/feature capabilities, along with cost.

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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1 hour ago, kelvinwsy said:

Direct connection between NAA and HQPlayer PC

I struggled with bridging my HQp PC to the NAA for weeks. The Ethernet poet just cannot bridge with the wifi adapter 

. I decided to get a dual port Ethernet card to try

Careless mistake and bought a PCI Card and not PCIe - does not fit 

After arranging a return I thought ... Hey I have 2 USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter. Let me try 2 of these ...

first experiment was wifi to router and 2 gigabit on HQPLAYER PC - one connected to my router and one to the Ethernet port of my NAA

(a quad core fanless PC with wifi and Ethernet)

Did not work this is just standard connection method

2ND experiment . 1 more Ethernet cable to the router for the built in Ethernet port. W/O Ethernet cables into the 2 gigabit adapters

Then NAA on wifi to router without any Ethernet connection

then I connected the two Ethernet cables on the gigabit adapters .. one more to the router and one more to the NAA

BRIDGED the two Ethernet gigabit to the fixed Ethernet plug in the HQ PC

FAILED to connect to the router the bridge dropped the router connection

about to give up then I thought hey there are 2 ends of a bridge!!!

then BREAKTHRU!!

I bridged the Wifi and Ethernet connection on the NAA ... yes the NAA

The router came on line on the NAA to the router

The 3 connection bridge of Ethernet on the PC Connected to the router 

SUCCESS

Initial impressions listening is quiet yet more dynamic sound at slightly lower volume

and I believe the NAA - HQ PC connection should be more resistant dropping out of the network 

Just sharing my experience with all CA members

thx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edit

Bridging can only be done on the two USB 3.0 gigabit adapters on the HQ PC

BUT I can bridge the wifi and Ethernet connection on the NAA ... just blind luck with the different PC Specs .. I don't understand as I am not a network expert. Just tried until it worked 

 

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I bought my sMS-200 back in December. I've been mulling upgrades. Has anyone had their sMS-200 upgraded to ultra? I'm basically trying to figure out if I should introduce something like the ISO Regen between the sMS-200 and my 2Qute...or possibly upgrade/replace my sMS-200 with the Ultra version.

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5 hours ago, ElviaCaprice said:

Rajiv, are you running two extra clocks from the TX USB Ultra to the sms-200?  Are you thus able to power the TX USB Ultra with an LPS-1 with 3 clocks on the sclk EX board inside?

 

Actually, all 4 clock taps on the sCLK-EX board inside my tX-USBultra are in use. 1 internally to the tX, 2 going to the sMS, and 1 going to the switch.

 

Yes, it runs with an LPS-1, which gets very toasty! This was obviously my first suspect, but I have played with beefier PSUs like the stock SMPS, an HDPlex 100 and an el cheapo, and they all have the problem.

 

so the problem lies elsewhere.

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19 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Actually, all 4 clock taps on the sCLK-EX board inside my tX-USBultra are in use. 1 internally to the tX, 2 going to the sMS, and 1 going to the switch.

 

Yes, it runs with an LPS-1, which gets very toasty! This was obviously my first suspect, but I have played with beefier PSUs like the stock SMPS, an HDPlex 100 and an el cheapo, and they all have the problem.

 

so the problem lies elsewhere.

What does sotm think?  Have they been able to zero in on which component is the issue?  That's good to hear about the tX-USB ultra being able to handle the 4 clocks being powered by an LPS-1.    Hope you get some answers soon.

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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Rajiv, Roy - thank you so much for your input here. This thread is sooo much fun and informative thanks to guys like you as well as other experts ;)

 

One question - would a chain of sMS200ultra followed by tX-USBultra followed by my Mutec MC3+ USB getting into my Yggy work in theory?

I'm wondering if the tX-USB would interfere with the Mutec here...?

Thanks!

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52 minutes ago, guerph said:

I bought my sMS-200 back in December. I've been mulling upgrades. Has anyone had their sMS-200 upgraded to ultra? I'm basically trying to figure out if I should introduce something like the ISO Regen between the sMS-200 and my 2Qute...or possibly upgrade/replace my sMS-200 with the Ultra version.

I wouldn't do that.  Of course we are waiting on real results with the ISO Regen, but you aren't going to need the GI on it with a great GI already on the 2Qute.  As far as upgrades, your really no different off than Romaz with his DAVE.  One can follow his footsteps with a 2Qute and enjoy significant improvements as he has with DAVE.

Myself, I'm going to stick with the USB route with my 2Qute, which is looking like this=> Mobo (EX clock)=>TXbexpusb 3.0 pcie card (EX clock)=>tX-USB ultra (all 4 EX clocks)=>2Qute (2 LPS-1's series). 

At this point I'm not sure what to use the 4th EX clock on, not that I have to.  I do have an ISO Regen on the way, 2nd batch, so I'll test that out.

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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40 minutes ago, ElviaCaprice said:

What does sotm think?  Have they been able to zero in on which component is the issue?  That's good to hear about the tX-USB ultra being able to handle the 4 clocks being powered by an LPS-1.    Hope you get some answers soon.

 

Based on my experiments, we've isolated it to the tX-USBultra. 

 

May has asked me to try a different DAC, which I will do today at Eric's with the DAVE session, part deux. :D

 

Yes, I too am relieved the LPS-1 has (apparently, just enough) juice for the tX-USBultra. Over time, hopefully we'll hear comparisons that people run on the tX-USBultra's, between the LPS-1, the Paul Hynes SR5/SR7, or the Vinnie Rossi Mini.

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